Choral Society

by Prue Leith

  More to change the subject than anything, Joanna had said, ‘I’m going to have my knees fixed tomorrow.’

  Rebecca had looked up, a piece of croissant halfway to her mouth. ‘How fixed?’

  ‘Dr Carlisle is going to stick a needle into them, suck off all the liquid, and inject—’

  ‘Urrghh, stop!’ Rebecca waved her hands in front of her shaking head. ‘Too much information!’

  ‘Well, you did ask!’

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want the medical stuff. I’ll faint. I want to know whether it will work, and how long for, what it costs and if your doc knows what he’s doing – and did you check him out to make sure he’s the best?’

  ‘Wow, that’s quite a few questions!’

  Rebecca can be pretty beady, thought Joanna. She was looking at her over her coffee cup, like a judge assessing the truth of a witness. ‘And?’ she’d asked.

  ‘My GP says it works in about seventy per cent of patients. I didn’t ask how long for. He referred me to Dr Carlisle. I suppose he knows what he’s doing. He’s in Harley Street and he’s supposed to be the best.’

  ‘Who says so?’

  ‘A chap I used to work with at Innovest. He had it done and was on the squash court the next week.’

  Rebecca put the coffee cup down slowly.

  ‘Jo-Jo, you must be careful. I dare say he’s OK, but you need to ask him a few questions. How many of these has he done? And how often you’ll have to come back, and how much will it cost. Ask if his fees come under the BUPA scale, and find out if there’s any danger of infection. And have a good look to see if his hands shake. You want a guy with steady hands.’

  Joanna had burst out laughing. ‘Rebecca, I’m having my knees injected, not brain surgery. My knees are like half-blown up balloons. I don’t think he can miss!’

  The starchy receptionist appeared at the door. ‘Dr Carlisle will see you now,’ she said. Joanna pushed herself off the sofa arm with difficulty and obediently followed.

  The doctor turned out to be a handsome young Indian. Joanna wondered if he had changed his name so as not to put off custom. She’d read of patients refusing to be treated by Indian doctors in hospitals. But of course she could not ask.

  ‘Dr Carlisle?’ she said. The doctor caught her hesitation and smiled.

  ‘I know, it’s odd. My great-grandfather was in the Indian Army.’

  She smiled sheepishly, caught out. He waved her to the chair in front of his desk. Joanna sat carefully.

  ‘Before we get started,’ she said, ‘do you think I could ask you a few questions?’

  He looked up. ‘Of course. Shoot.’

  Then Joanna realised she couldn’t ask him anything about his competence. He would think it was because she didn’t trust an Indian doctor. So she asked him how long the effect of the treatment would last, assuming it worked at all.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know. Almost everyone experiences some improvement in mobility and pain relief. It can last for years, months, sometimes only weeks – though this is rare – and, sadly, sometimes the effect is minimal. If, as in your case, there is quite a bit of wear and tear to the bone as the cartilage gets thinner with age, then it is sometimes effective to have two or three procedures a year. But depending on the speed of deterioration in the knee joint, you could have a good few years’ more hiking.’

  ‘Tennis, actually.’

  ‘Tennis then. A good few more years’ tennis.’

  He waited expectantly for the next question, but Joanna was chickening out of Rebecca’s more difficult instructions. It was ridiculous really, she thought, you would take more references for a gardener or a cleaner than we dare take for someone who is going to stick needles into us and pump us full of drugs. Just because he wears a white coat. She shook her head. ‘No, I’m OK.’

  ‘You look a bit uncertain. Shall I answer my FAQs? Most frequently asked questions? Sometimes I think I should send patients a leaflet in advance since they quite rightly want to ask questions but seldom do.’

  She smiled gratefully, and nodded.

  ‘What people are most anxious about are MRSA, staphylococcus aureus or clostridium difficile. The answer is we carry out enormously strict hygiene protocols here, and we have never had a case of such infection.

  ‘The next question that every sensible patient should want to ask is, how experienced am I? Well I do nothing but knees and I will have done well over five hundred procedures like this one, followed by a cortisone injection, this year alone. And it is a very simple procedure.’

  ‘Good Lord,’ she said, ‘that many? What did people do before this was possible?’

  ‘They put up with the immobility and the discomfort, and if it was very bad they had surgery to remove bits of cartilage.’ Dr Carlisle continued with his catechism. ‘The next question is, if it doesn’t work, what next? Well, we could try again, or, if your knees continue to be so painful, you could have an operation. That almost always works, but it costs more money. On the question of cost, I’m afraid the procedure does not get any cheaper the more of them you have. No discount for quantity I’m afraid.’

  By the time he had finished Joanna was almost embarrassed to have started him off.

  He had her X-rays pinned to the wall, and had a long look at them before sitting her on his examination couch.

  She didn’t have to undress completely, just take off her shoes and trousers. He had her sit on the edge first while he prodded her knees with his fingers, probing gently. And then he asked her to lie on the bed with her legs flat.

  He swabbed one knee with antiseptic and she felt her calves tense with anxiety. The syringe he held was huge, with a whopping great needle you might use on a horse, Joanna thought. She shut her eyes and screwed them up against the expected pain.

  She was right. It hurt like hell. While he was drawing off the fluid round her knee, he told her it would not take a minute and just to try to hold still. It seemed to take for ever. He also said that he was sorry about the discomfort. Discomfort, thought Joanna, gripping the sides of the bed and screwing up her face, why do medics talk of discomfort? It’s excruciating pain, not discomfort!

  But she was clenching her teeth too hard to get into semantics right now.

  When he had siphoned off the fluid from her right knee he gave her a cortisone injection into the joint and that hurt like hell too. But only briefly. As she yelped Dr Carlisle said, ‘I’ve injected some anaesthetic with the cortisone. The pain will soon go.’

  He was right: the pain evaporated fast. But then Joanna had to endure it all over again on the left knee.

  And that was that. Dr Carlisle made Joanna flex her legs, and then sit up and swing them round to stand up. That sort of twisting movement had been painful for months, but now, suddenly, it did not hurt at all.

  She walked out of the surgery as she walked two years ago, with a swing in her step, no limping, no pain. She even walked down the steps into Harley Street without clutching the rail.

  When she got home she was so pleased with her new-look knees (the puffiness had gone completely) she decided to impress Stewart. She used her noxious-smelling hair remover on her legs, rubbed instant tan all over them, cut and painted her toenails and even gave her knees a squirt of Guerlain.

  Stewart dutifully stroked her knees as only he could and kissed her legs from ankle to thigh. ‘I thought your knees were fine before,’ he said, ‘and if they get swollen again, I’ll still think they are the sexiest legs in town.’

  It was, thought Joanna, good to be lied to sometimes.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lucy looked up at the woman standing in front of her.

  ‘Is the book for yourself, or shall I put someone else’s name in it?’

  ‘Oh, it’s for my son. He’s a chef. And he’s your greatest fan. If you could just write something …’

  ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Alan.’

  Lucy wrote, For Alan, from one cook to anot
her, Happy Cooking. Lucy Barnes.

  ‘Oh thank you, thank you.’

  The woman was gushing embarrassingly, but Lucy was delighted.

  Suddenly the voice of Fiona, her publisher’s PR, lifted above the noise of the crowd.

  ‘Any customers wanting plain signed copies of Peasant Soups, should go to the table towards the front of the shop, where there is a shorter queue. If you want to meet the author, Lucy Barnes, she is signing copies towards the back, but there is a much longer queue there.’

  Lucy had been signing copies steadily for an hour. And it had been the same story at Harrods, at Hatchards and at the big branches of Waterstone’s. She could not believe it, but Peasant Soups was flying off the shelves.

  There had been a lot of publicity. There were cracking reviews for the writing (she had been hailed as the new Elizabeth David by the more literary critics), for the recipes and for Joshua’s astonishing photographs. The book was already entered for the Glenfiddich awards, Cookery Book of the Year and for the André Simon prize.

  Some of the recipes were being serialised in the Sunday Telegraph magazine, there had been interviews or profiles of her in the Observer and the Daily Mail, Foyles had given her a literary lunch, and she had spoken at a number of lunch clubs. But Lucy knew it was the TV footage that had produced the crowds. On the Robert and Janine show, Janine had given the book a fulsome plug. And, most of all, Lucy’s appearance on Orlando’s Glorious Food had turned it into the number one cookery book. Orlando had said he was giving it to all his friends and relatives, male or female, for Christmas.

  The constant smiling made Lucy’s face ache, and it was a relief to hear the announcement, ‘The store will close in ten minutes.’

  She found Joshua in the bar of the Mandarin Oriental. He rose and kissed her.

  ‘Guess what? Peasant Soups overtook Jamie Oliver on Amazon today.’

  ‘Good Lord! Really? How do you know?’

  ‘Nora from the publishers has been trying to get hold of you.’ He took her bag and coat from her, and she plonked herself down on the sofa. ‘But you never have your phone on so she rang me in desperation.’

  ‘I’ve been signing books, dammit. I can hardly have the wretched thing ringing, can I?’

  He raised an eyebrow in tolerant disbelief, and said, ‘Nora had more good news. WH Smith have made your book their Cookbook of the Year, and given it a whole window in the larger branches.’

  Lucy leant into him and kissed his cheek. ‘Not my book. Our book. We have outsold Jamie. It’s the pictures that draw them, and you know it.’

  ‘Drink?’ he asked.

  ‘Lord yes, I think I need a scotch.’

  Drink in hand, she felt herself slowly relaxing.

  ‘Josh,’ she said, ‘what shall I do about this television thing?’

  ‘What do you want to do about it?’

  Lucy frowned into her glass.

  ‘It’s not that easy. My agent and the publishers are dead keen. They keep saying, just look at who sells the most cookbooks – it’s the telly chefs.’

  ‘Except this one,’ interrupted Joshua. ‘Peasant Soups never had a TV programme to go with it. And look where it is.’

  ‘A fluke, according to my editor, though she’s too polite to say so to me. And if I had a television series, we’d have sold even more.’

  ‘So what’s the downside?’

  ‘Oh Josh, you know what it is! I hate doing it, that’s all. You hang around for ever, you never get the dishes to work exactly as you want them to. There’ll be some brainless presenter asking stupid questions and babbling inanities. Cooking is cheap to make. It’s just wallpaper for afternoon telly. And they won’t let me plug our book because it wasn’t published by them, and anyway it’s not what Celebrity Top Table will be about.’ She paused for breath, and then concluded. ‘Besides, they pay peanuts.’

  ‘Mmm. OK, that seems to be pretty clear. You don’t want what they are offering, but are you hostile to all television?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If you could have a telly series on your own terms, in prime time, not this on-the-cheap afternoon one, what would you like it to be? What would make the hanging around and the lousy money worth while?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy. I’d like the programme to reflect our book – to be about the history of peasant soups, meeting people in Sardinia or Poland or wherever who still make them and learning their history. Some of them go back centuries.’

  ‘Could be interesting. But expensive to do of course.’

  ‘That’s the problem. But wouldn’t it be great? Take the Spanish potajes de lentejas for example. That recipe comes from a tapas bar in Lanzarote, in the wine-growing area. People think Lanzarote is nothing but overtanned English tourists swilling lager on the beaches, but up in the hills the landscape is astonishing. The fields are covered with black volcanic gravel, called picon I think, and the vines are grown in hollows out of the wind, with each vine surrounded by a semicircular wall of black rock, and courgettes and tomatoes pinned to the ground with rocks to stop them being blown away. The place, with its low white houses, triangular hills and blue sky would be a gift to a good film maker.’

  ‘Hardly gastronomic though.’

  ‘Agreed. But that lentil soup recipe was handed down from the grandfather who made it for the comrades in the Spanish Civil War. When he came home it became the foundation of the family restaurant and later the winery. The family thinks they owe their fortunes to lentil soup. That could make a good programme, or part of one, don’t you think?’

  Joshua considered this. ‘It could work. Why don’t you do a treatment, and see if your agent can sell it to a broadcaster?’

  Suddenly Lucy felt excited and awake again. She sat up and leant towards Joshua.

  ‘Why don’t we do it together? A couple of oldies doddering round the world talking to even older oldies about what their grandmothers cooked. You have such a gentle personality and I’m famously knowledgeable and greedy. They might just like the combination.’

  ‘And it might make a change from all those testosterone-driven chefs dancing about and swearing all the time.’

  They continued to discuss the idea over dinner, and by the time they were on the night sleeper to Cornwall, they had blocked out the main elements of the series. Lucy would do the research and provide the historical and social stuff, and Joshua would cook the food on camera and take the still photographs.

  Joshua went off to the bar car to get them a nightcap, and Lucy undressed, pulling on an old shirt of David’s – she preferred them to nightdresses – cleaned her teeth and climbed into the bottom bunk.

  Joshua reappeared with a couple of miniature whiskies and two plastic glasses.

  Lucy thought for the hundredth time what a thoroughly good guy Josh was. She studied his slightly rounded back as he washed his face and cleaned his teeth at the basin. She hoped he wouldn’t want sex. She was so easy and relaxed with him, and felt such affection for him, that she wouldn’t refuse.

  Joshua leant into her bunk and kissed her. Then he handed her a plastic glass of whisky and water.

  ‘Darling Lucy, best-selling cookery writer, part owner of Pencarrick, and, who knows, future telly star, good night, sleep tight.’ Then he climbed into the top bunk and she could hear him pouring his whisky.

  Lying so close to him in their own little cabin pleased Lucy. She liked the way the coat hangers were padded and covered in leather so they wouldn’t rattle and keep the customers awake, and that everything was designed with thought and care.

  ‘I love sleepers, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Not a lot. You get no sleep and the breakfast is dire.’

  ‘I know, but it’s like playing house, with everything arranged just so. There’s that net thing for a book and water bottle, and even a tray that comes out of the wall for breakfast. Once upon a time they even had a little hook with a velvet-lined hollow to hang your fob-watch in. But it’s still pretty good, don’
t you think?’

  ‘Won’t get much sleep, though.’

  ‘True,’ said Lucy, ‘but don’t you like being rocked to sleep? And waking up and finding you’re not there yet – more sleep and more rocking to come?’

  They drifted into silence then and Lucy turned off her light. Then Joshua turned his off too, and said, ‘Lucy, I feel I should be making passionate love to you in that narrow little bunk. Especially as you have such a romantic view of sleepers. If I were the demon lover you deserve, I would be, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘Darling Josh, I’m glad you are not. I was just lying here thinking that I hoped you didn’t feel like sex because I really am too tired tonight. But I’d never say so, or plead a headache!’

  Joshua laughed, and then Lucy joined in.

  ‘Maybe if I was on hormone replacement therapy,’ she said, ‘you wouldn’t be safe. But all I want is what we have. I love the warmth of you in bed, and your arms round me, and everything about you. I just don’t want the humpy-pumpy very often. Do you mind?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Quite a relief, really.’

  They went on talking in the friendly dark until Lucy heard a gentle snore from above. She didn’t mind it. David used to snore, and Lucy had rather missed it.

  It was the second week of the children’s Christmas holidays, and Lucy and her grandchildren were preparing a welcome dinner for Grace and Archie. The children had been with her, without Grace or Archie for ten days, and apart from one trip to London for her Messiah rehearsal, Lucy had devoted herself to them, and it had been wonderful.

  At lunchtime they sat round the kitchen table, peeling freshly cooked prawns, piling them onto crusty chunks of brown bread, squeezing lemon juice on them, giving them a good grinding of black pepper, then wolfing them down. Johnny sneaked most of his to the cat under the table.

  ‘Mum will never believe we ate prawns,’ Clare said, ‘especially that they were alive and we cooked them.’

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, darling,’ said Lucy. ‘Maybe you and Magnificat like them, but I’m not sure about Johnny.’